Tag: zerotohero

My mom raised me alone from the time I was a little girl. She used to say it was you and me against the world (like the Helen Reddy song). Last year my mom was diagnosed with dementia. Long before the diagnosis she has battled her own demons alone. I have to remind myself that this is her choice, even though her three children […]

Why yes, we are actively house hunting. Over the past six months we have had threats of a car being towed while parked in our reserved spot, a shutdown Airbnb, four dogs a barking and a partridge in a pear tree. The next door neighbors and the home owners association are definitely our driving factors for house hunting. And, after looking for three weekends or so we have found an area where we can downsize the mortgage and upsize the property. By increasing my daily commute by approximately 40 minutes a day, we can afford a single family home on a quarter acre of land, and save the home owners association fees I pay now (which coincidentally will offset the cost of my mother’s current home care). We will also be able to cut the mortgage from a 30 year to a 15 year and by about 35% of where I started on this condo. That means there is an actual chance we could own a home of our own in maybe 11 years or less! The key for us though is finding a buyer who will accept an offer contingent upon us selling my condo. We will be using the equity from the condo to put the down payment on the house. You do gotta love the loan agents and real estate agents who try to push for multiple loans and for us to get stuck with multiple properties […]

So… I may have written an email to animal control. Now, listen up… I am not an animal hater. We have a very adorable cat who you can follow on Twitter (@zim_flash). I don’t even just hate dogs… but Mr. Cabbage and I both very much love peace, quiet and the freedom to SLEEP! If we didn’t love sleep so much maybe we’d consider children… NAH! While talking to our realtor about our intention to sell, I fretted about how you even hold an open house with loud, boisterous animals sitting in the kitchen window of the townhouse next door scaring anyone who comes near our house. At our realtor’s suggestion my first step was emailing the insanely overpriced condo association who is always quick with their threats to tow cars or shutdown an Airbnb. Sadly, they didn’t want to take a stance on how many dogs is permissable or how much noise they are ok with them making. The president referred me to the city… which led me to animal control. They were so set on shutting down my Airbnb which helped me pay 7% of my mortgage last year when in the previous eight years I had only paid 13% COMBINED…. I highly recommend hosting an Airbnb if you can… but I digress. Hello, I am not sure what can be done, my neighbor has four dogs, which I have been told may be a violation of City […]